When we think about applying traditional westernpsychology to Islamic populations, we immediately
encounter difficulties,
ideological as well as practical difficulties.
Its not always possible to transfer these psychological notions
to groups for whom the theories proposed don’t
fit
neatly within the framework they have been brought up in. We
recognize that its very important for Muslim groups to have
forums which will encourageindividuals to express their problems and which will
allow them to be comfortable, as their needs aren’t
always catered for by the health services or social services
here. And this often inhibits many from coming forward for
psychological services. In fact there are a number of reasons
for people covering up or attempting to hide psychological
problems, or the emotional distress they’re
experiencing.
Unfortunately in the age where counseling services are so
effectively used in western countries, all across Europe and
North America,
it’s
still considered taboo in our communities to access these
services.

This issue of services not catering for our needs is now
becoming widely recognized. And the good news is that there are
many centers which are becoming established here in a
multi-ethnic community because of equal opportunities policies
and because of cross-cultural research; research with different
cultures is showing that what may be an effective form of
treatment for people from one culture may not be beneficial
for people from another culture because a lot of the issues may
not be relevant. The positive outcome here is that there is an
increase in research to show us that peoples’
constructs, the ways in which they view the world, are different
and can’t
always be generalized. Just to give an example, there have been
studies carried out with black African individuals who were
diagnosed with a psychiatric ill-ness, schizophrenia; but when
this same group of people was assessed by psychologists and
psychiatrists from their own culture, they discovered that the
behavior they were exhibiting which led to this diagnosis, was
considered perfectly acceptable in their own cultures. So the
con-sequence of such a diagnosis of course is that they would be
receiving psychotropic medication,
drugs for the treatment of mental disorders which they didn’t
have, which have no organic basis. And this had
in fact been found to be happening, a lot of research has
uncovered this sort of practice.

So as a consequence of these sorts of difficulties,
many centers and organizations have arisen which are dealing
with specific
areas, such as bereavement, or care for the elderly, marital
problems and many others. But they’re
often isolated and working alone;
and they’ve
usually come about in response to cultural and lingual needs of
particular communities, such as the Afro-Caribbean community,

or the Asian
community for example, which are considered homogenous groups so
they’ve
been put together on the basis of their ethnic back-grounds.But
they’re
not necessarily fulfilling
the requirements of our faith, so its not an ideal situation.

We can very briefly
look at the psychological framework within which western
practitioners are working. We know that psychology is basically
considered to be the study of the human mind and behavior.

Its a broad discipline which not only relates to
how psychology is commonly portrayed in the media - as dealing
with mental illness - but covers all sorts of other issues
relating to human development, such as
learning, and human distress,relationships, marital issues, the upbringing of
children. Although its a relatively new western science,
psychology has
firmly
established itself as a discipline with rigorous scientific,
empirical support. Ironically,
the literary definition
of the word psychology, the origin of the word is, the discourse
or the study of the soul or the spirit.

Psychology is regarded as a natural science,
involving the study of the laws of nature, of human
spirituality, but is this really the case?

Problems with Western
Psychology

Someone who has questioned this very
fiercely
and has attacked the very basis of western psychology is Dr
Malik Badri he is an experiencedMuslim psychotherapist and professor of psychology from
Sudan. The following quote of his illustrates his views:
“They
will claim (he’s
talking here about westernpsychologists) that their theories about human behavior
are based purely on empirical, unbiased observation. They will
even claim to take a neutral stand with respect to the existence
of God and the place of religion and to apply an objective
non-biased
scientific approach
in studying spiritual
”.

Clearly when
we’re
talking about nature, about the nature of man, we can’t
take him and study man, hisproblems, his needs, as a distinct entity, removed from
his Creator. The great ‘alim
Syed Mujtaba Musawi Lari has done a lot of work in this area and
he emphasizes that man has spiritual needs in the same way that
he has physical needs, and we need to consider them. Faith
provides an individual with strength against despair and
hopelessness. If we consider the example of depression, its a debilitating illness, and
the majority of us would have experienced depression at some
stage. But there are different types, and it can also be
considered to be on a continuum with varying degrees of
severity. In the most severe cases the ultimate end would be
suicide or a suicidal attempt.

Imam Jaffer al-Sadiq (AS) has said that a true believer can
never commit suicide.

We all
experience psychological difficulties,
but our faith provides us with a motivating force to help
overcome them. That’s
not to say that hoping and wishing that the situation will
change is enough, we really need to take positive action too.
Often we also need professional assistance.
It’s
essential especially with individuals diagnosed with serious
clinical conditions, that they continue to
receive
professional help. For us there isn’t
a dichotomy between faith - our religious convictions - and
scientific
study and scientific advance. This is where we as Muslims
diverted from the traditional Judea – Christian notions of
faith. For a Muslim, knowledge and science reinforce faith
rather than oppose it. The result of this belief was the golden
age of science and faith in Islamic civilization, in which
science and knowledge made huge advances by Muslims reaffirming
their belief through scientific
discovery. In contrast,

Psychology is regarded
as a natural

science, involving the study

of the laws of nature, of
human

spirituality, but is this really the

case ?

by Muslim thinkers throughout history.

Psychological Practice for
Muslim Psychologists

So coming back to the dilemma of the Muslim psychologist, can we
effectively continue to use the principles of psychology in the
treatment of our Muslim patients, given that psychological
principles are based upon western research and ideals? How
applicable is psychology to us? Well there are many schools of
thought in psychology, many ways of explaining human behavior.
They’re
not all couched within an atheistic, materialistic frame-work;
we can briefly
look at an example: the humanistic school of thought is a fairly
modern movement in psychology which started to emerge in the
1950s and 60s – the humanistic model features quite prominently
now in psychotherapeutic intervention, its quite commonly used.

The humanistic
school focuses on a positive concept of human nature, and
emphasizes the individual’s
uniqueness. Humanistic psychologists take account of the
individual’s
self and subjective inner experiences, such as the concepts of
values, faith and self-direction.

And this
is where
it differs from other, more traditional schools of thought which
are based on the belief that human beings are really the same
and that their behavior is determined, pre-determined by certain
forces beyond their control. The humanistic view, just as its name suggests, looks at the
person as an individual, as a human being; what is it that
motivates this person, what are the things that makes this
person unique? They take account of theindividual’s
personal goals, and their aims for achievement. And in this
respect, the humanistic psychologists are the closest to encompassing the
religious dimension--to working with the spiritual aspect of the
person as well.

As we’re
growing in a multicultural society, we’re
seeing a synthesis, this combining, of theories, to try to
arrive at the most suitable model which will be relevant for
most people from different backgrounds
–
although again the situation isn’t
ideal because the paradigm or the framework within which we’re
working isn’t
Islamic.

So I was really fortunate when I had the opportunity while I was
in Iran to interview one of Iran’s
leading psychologists Dr Parveen Debajnia, as I was interested
in psychological practice in a country completely guided by Islamic principles. She was very proud
of the modern teaching and research facilities that
they had in the new university hospital in Qom and she discussed
the therapeutic intervention, how they worked with patients, and
advances they’d
made based on scientific
research within an Islamic framework.

And you’ll
find
many examples of the type Dr Debajnia discussed with me in the
practice of Malik Badri in Lebanon, in Sudan and in Saudi
Arabia. Just to illustrate, he gives an example of one of his
female patients who had been admitted for anxiety and
depression, and she was experiencing phobias
–
displaying undue, irrational fears. She had been seen by other
psychologists in the hospital but she wasn’t
responding to any of the types therapy that they was using
–
nothing was effective.

When Malik Badri began working with her he began reciting a
relevant verse of the Qur’an,
she immediately responded and broke down in tears
–
this led to the discovery of a lot of other problems which she
had been hiding, she confessed to them straight away
–
and this was what had been hindering
her recovery before,
as the previous psychologists weren’t
aware of these other really important underlying factors. So
when these came to the fore Malik Badri was able to work on
these issues effectively using traditional psychotherapeutic
techniques, behavioural methods. And Alham-dulillah this patient
made a very dramatic improvement. When he told his colleague how
he had successfully treated her, he expressed his amazement and
said,
“I’ve
kept a copy of the Holy Qur’an
in my office
for the last three years and it never once occurred to me to
bring it down from the bookshelf and use it as part of my
therapy”.

So there we’ve
got an inspirational example of how Islamic teachings can guide
us in our scientific
practice; and there are many other such examples.

We’ve
seen then in a very small way how Muslims are able to benefit
from modern psychology. Western psychological techniques are not
always reconcilable with Islamic ideology as they have evolved
traditionally emphasizing sound scientific
practice without much regard for consideration of faith.
However, by employing empirical research findings in the light
of Islamic teachings there is strong evidence that Muslim psychologists can
restore spiritual vigor to the essentially materialistic western
psychology.